Shrimp, Bok Choy, and Tofu, Oh My!

Last year in a brainstorming session for an upcoming event at work I pitched a ramen-themed photo booth. I love a weird/unique photo opportunity! I work at a non-profit arts center. The event was part of a ramen bowl exhibition and on the closing night we would serve ramen and sake, and people could take the bowls they bought from the exhibition right off the wall and get them filled with ramen.

Since nearly every person that works here is an artist we were not short of talented individuals to create a large stand up ramen bowl, giant ramen noodles, giant chopsticks, and a celery hat.

My contributions were more along the sewing line. I made 3 little plush bok choy, a jumbo shrimp named Ernesto, and some tofu cubes.

For the Bok Choy I sketched out 2 sides. I added a dart to the bottom of the stalk to create the bulb shape. For the veins in the leaves I used one of the decorative stitches on my sewing machine to make them stand out a bit more.

Then I attached the leaf to the stalk, leaving the bottom of the stalk open.

I found these plastic grids at the craft store and thought it would give the leaf some structure. I cut it out, rolled it up and slid it in through the hole in the bottom of the stalk.

I stuffed the stalk and then did an invisible stitch on the bottom and Viola! Bok Choys!

 

We decided we needed something to represent a meat that could be served in ramen and I thought a shrimp would be the most fun and recognizable. (I also named him Ernesto.)

I bought some pink satin remnants and went to work.

I did make his eyes out of felt and I thought the blue made them more soulful.

Here’s the jumbo shrimp next to our jumbo cat, to give you an idea of size.

Sadly, I will not be in town for the ramen event, but we thought we should do a little photo shoot for social media and I dragged my co-workers in to it with me.

We sincerely enjoyed ourselves!

-Megan